By Laurie Bomba, Kansas City Star, Nov 11.
E. Thomas McClanahan suspects that shoppers who buy organic foods are doing so merely for "psychological reassurance" or as a "penance for the excesses of consumerism."
His opening paragraph seeks to alarm readers with the price of organic maple syrup compared with the store brand. If he had read the labels, he'd know that the reason the high-end organic syrup costs 10 dollars is that it's actually maple syrup, distilled from the slow-dripping sap of sugar maple trees. Organic or not, maple syrup is expensive to produce, and is therefore expensive to buy. The corn-syrup-based imitation he bought at one-tenth the price is something else entirely.
The vast majority of organic foods are not priced like delicacies, and they are rapidly making their way beyond the shelves of natural and gourmet markets and into the aisles of discount grocers and price clubs.
While not everyone is able to jump on the organic bandwagon yet, those of us who do go out of our way - geographically and financially - to buy organic foods have many legitimate reasons for doing so.
read more (KansasCity.com)
